Volunteering

[Hikaru-chan]

I volunteer at:

a nursery

a summer camp

Ga Aqua.

maybe the Fox soon.

[AllenA07]

I'm doing an internship, not sure if that counts.

[downunder]

I do a few volunteer things:

 

I do work with homless people one night a week, like giving them food and hanging out with them.

 

I do youthwork.

 

I also work for an organisation that lobbies politicians about increasing foreign aid and doing something about social justice issues, so I visit MP's now and then, and start co-ordinated campaigns like letter writing.

[terrancew_hod]

I volunteer at a local AIDS care organization throughout the year. I've worked my way up from cleaning and setup to welcome center greeter, escorting special entertainment and working the front door at various events. I enjoy doing it and I get to meet some pretty interesting people and celebrities. I also get into some pretty good parties as well! My hours add up, so I usually save them to exchange them for admission to a big beach party, which is the highlight of White Party Week. So I almost got the body "beach ready".

 

But besides the parties, I have a blast volunteering.

 

Terry

[monkeyoverlord71]

I have to volunteer for 3 months at a charity shop for my Duke of Edinburgh Award and i can't wait for some strange reason!

Here is the award website so you can see what i'm going on about. Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme

[Cameron]

I was a Big Brother for about three years (2000-2003). I have also volunteered at community radio, and worked for no pay (for a month) at a cool job when I was in college in order to gain experience (once they saw how awesome I was, they did start paying!).

 

Cameron.

[SonOfBeastSucks]

I'm a senior in high school this year and also work 30 hours a week, so I don't have as much time for volunteering as I would like to. But I try to go with some friends to the homeless shelter on Saturday mornings, and I work in an animal shelter whenever I have the time.

 

Also, thanks to all the people who have posted in this thread and gave me advice when I first posted it a couple years ago and to those who have been posting in it recently.

[BeemerBoy]

My wife and I volunteer all the time. Homeless programs, animal shelters, etc.....we're helping out any way we can. We're even trying really hard to create our own charitable foundation.

[DiSab]

Given I'm in a service fraternity, I'm volunteering fairly often. And I love every minute of it.

[TheBannedKid]

I got my first job at the local pet store by volunteering. After a few months they felt it was time to hire me. Also, not really volunteer work but I did a 100-mile bike ride a few weeks ago in support of a cure for MS.

[ash.1111]

Yeah heeps of times! But it's always been court ordered.

[thrillgeek]

^I'm sorry to here that

 

I volunteered at a hospital before I got a real job. I thin I did it for what seemed like 2 years at least.

[Terror-Penguin]

I did volunteer work at the psychiatric hospital that my Dad works at. You've never lived until you've had to work a 5 hour shift in a building full of slightly insane old women all staring at you.

[printersdevil78]

Wow, how did I ever miss this thread!? I'm actually the president this year of my local chapter of the Jaycees, an international civic organization.

 

We organize a ton of community service activities each year, including an annual Easter egg hunt, the city's Christmas parade and everyone's personal favorite--the Children's Christmas Shopping Tour, during which we take about 200 underprivileged kids (ages 3-11) shopping for holiday gifts. Our foundation raises thousands of dollars a year for this cause through its annual mail campaign, and we get hundreds of community members involved as volunteers and chaperones.

 

The local Wal-Mart is great to us (it probably helps that its manager is one of our members), reserving a block of check-out lines just for our event, donating all the giftwrap and turning its breakroom into a "holding" area for kids when they're done shopping, playing cartoon DVDs, and providing coloring activities and free snacks. The cashiers are great, too, each of them keeping boxes of candy bars at their registers to "fill in the gaps" if, say, that year's spending limit is $65 and a child has only $63 worth of items. That's enough left over for at least two Hershey bars!

 

A local church donates buses and drivers, allowing us to provide transportation to kids who otherwise would have no way to get to the store. A local appliance store volunteers their trucks and drivers to help us deliver the toys once they're purchased (there's not room on the buses for 200 kids AND $13,000 worth of toys). And the sheriff's office provides volunteer officers to help keep the kids in line (we started taking this measure after the year Santa got beat up--some of these kids come from REALLY rough neighborhoods).

 

Depending on how much we raise each year, the kids get up to $70 to spend (tax-free). Wal-Mart always makes sure they have at least one bike in that price range on sale for us that day. Some of the kids go wild and spend it all on themselves. Since we leave the invitation distribution up to the local school system, most of the guidance counselors try to rotate who gets invited each year; for most of these kids, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not to be squandered. Others have a list and refuse to leave until everyone on it--from grandma to the youngest sibling--has a present in their cart.

 

Due to certain incidents we've had in the past (we've been doing this for about a quarter century now--it started at the local McCrory's, a national dime store chain that went out of business about a decade and a half ago), we've had to institute some unusual rules over the years. Parents are no longer allowed to accompany their children because most of them tried to influence what their kids bought ("You can't have that toy; mommy needs new shoes!"). We've had to ban all foods (except things like Hickory Farms gift packs as a present for Uncle Bob and those checkout line candy bars) and toiletries because after we banned parents, they started grocery lists with their kids. And we've had to add a volunteer officer to our distribution point after we caught one woman trying to steal bags of toys off one of the trucks a few years ago before we could get them to the kids who bought them.

 

After the year Santa ended up with a black eye, I stepped into the role, and I have some pretty funny--and heartbreaking--stories from my three years in the suit. Last year when one of the kids wanted to buy a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV set, his chaperone (who was also a member of our chapter), unable to find any other chapter members in the immediate vicinity to ask, came over to me and asked, "Hey, Santa, we want to buy at TV, but we aren't sure if we're allowed to spend our money on electronics." I told her the rule was no food, toiletries or firearms; everything else was perfectly OK. She made it a point to duck around the corner a few minutes later to say, "Thanks for clarifying, Santa" and then added sarcastically, "Especially on the firearms."

 

Later that same morning as I was on my way out of the store to change back into my "civilian" clothes, two little girls stopped me, and one said, "Are you REALLY Santa?" Having dealt with this question many times, I knelt down and said, "Do YOU think I'm really Santa?" to which the girl said, "No." At which point I stood back up and said, "Well then I guess it's all what you make of it, now isn't it? Merry Christmas!" As I walked away, I heard the other little girl say, "See, I told you he really IS Santa Claus!" Our president at the time, who overheard the whole exchange, followed me around the corner and managed to hold in his laughter until then. "Santa," he said. "It's only 7 a.m. Do you think next year you can try not to get existential with the kids until at least 9?"

 

But my most heartbreaking Santa experience came two years ago when a little girl, about 5 or 6, stopped in front of me, said, "Santa, I have a secret to tell you," and motioned for me to kneel down, which I did. "What's your secret?" I asked. She proceeded to tell me: "My pa says you're not real because you never come to our house. But I know you're real 'cause you made it so I could be here today." She then hugged me, followed up with, "I love you, Santa!" and ran off to start her shopping.

 

Unfortunately, since I'll be busy doing presidential things during this year's Shopping Tour, I won't get to be Santa (not at this event, anyway; I'm still the official Santa for my childhood hometown Christmas parade, which my dad runs). But it's a fair trade for the new community events I've been able to institute this year, including a child safety seat awareness day at which we replaced nine defective safety seats (out of the 42 we checked--a county record at the time), potentially saving the lives of those children; the county's first county-wide Read Across America event that set a one-day attendance record at the city library; a Halloween costume giveaway for less fortunate children (which had much lower attendance than I suspected it would); a post-holiday military supply drive that garnered more than 500 items for troops serving abroad; a statewide disposable camera and gift card drive for the Casey Cares Foundation, a Make-A-Wish-type organization for critically ill children in the Mid-Atlantic region; and Treat Street, during which on Halloween night we will turn our city's largely abandoned Downtown Plaza into safe trick-or-treating environment (modeled in part after Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, only without fireworks, a parade or Space Mountain) for children who come from neighborhoods where trick-or-treating is no longer advisable.

 

Of course, what a lot of people fail to understand is that events like these take a lot of money, not just for the materials themselves ($700 worth of candy for Treat Street alone, for example), but for infrastructure--everything from insurance (which is our biggest annual expense) to postage to meeting space. Because of that, besides community projects we end up running a lot of volunteer fundraisers throughout the year, as well--everything from pouring beer at local festivals in exchange for a small percentage of the profits to holding an annual basket bingo (which didn't do so hot this year given the current economy).

 

Earlier this year, I instituted a new fundraiser that we hope will grow to help fund nearly all of our events each year (the Shopping Tour will always have its own separate mail campaign): a 50-mile bike ride combining scenic views with stops at local historical points of interest. We raised nearly $1,000 with 41 riders this year; our hope is to grow the event to 750 riders int he next 10 years, giving us an annual gross of about $18,000 for a single day's worth of manpower. It sure beats earning a couple hundred dollars selling Panera Bread coupons!

 

Anyway, sorry if I seem overly excited. It's only because I am!